A novel hybrid shuffled frog leaping algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time windows

This paper proposes a novel hybrid shuffled frog leaping algorithm (HSFLA) for vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The diversity control strategy is developed to construct the memeplexes of the HSFLA and avoid ending the search prematurely. The modified clone selection procedure is presented to improve the quality of the solutions and bring more diversity to the population. Improved and extended extremal optimization (EO) with alternative move operators is also introduced to the exploitation of the algorithm. Furthermore, the adaptive soft time windows penalty measure is proposed to allow the existence of infeasible solutions in the evolution process. Our approach is estimated and compared with other state-of-the-art heuristics using Solomon and Cordeau VRPTW test sets. The experimental results show that the presented algorithm is very effective for handling VRPTW.